Cellink, An iPhone Charging, Card-Reading, Battery Backup-Ing Dongle

The Cellink is ugly, but it might turn out to be the most useful thing in your gadget bag

Do you carry a backup battery, a camera connection kit and a charger with you in your man-sack? Yeah, me too, and it’s really no big deal as even together they weight almost nothing. But if you’d rather combine these items into one easy-to-lose box, then the Cellink I is just the thing for you.

Designed for the iPad and iPhone, the Cellink lists its abilities thusly:

Portable backup battery

USB charger

Data sync cable and media transfer

Micro SD/SDCH memory card storage

The battery gives you 600mAh, which compares rather poorly to even the iPhone’s 1430 mAh battery, and will barely make a dent in the new iPad’s gargantuan 11,600 mAh battery pack. The sync cable is handy, the “USB charger” is really just an adapter that lets you plug the iPhone into any old USB charger or USB port, and the “media transfer” does exactly the same as your cable.

So, in short, the Cellink combines the functions of many things you already have. That’s not to say it isn’t useful — having them all to hand instead of gathering stuff up when you leave the house is pretty handy. And that spare battery, which will charge the iPhone to roughly 40%, could be great in an emergency. And all this for just $55.